Sounds like I may have to have a look at this in future...however I am using shared storage here, so the level 2 won't work for me at the moment. I am almost ready to start putting together some sort of VDI infrastructure for evaluation in the next few months, so I might try and have a look at this in eval as well. I had heard of Marathon some years ago when I was looking at alternatives to clustering (before the VM revolution really started), but I hadn't thought to look them up again since, you seem to be right that they aren't marketed particularly well (at least not here in Blighty)
2009/2/11 Doige, Clayton <[email protected]> > Sort of. > > > > The citrix version of VMotion is indeed powered by a cut down version of > Marathon. > > > > I had a somewhat hard time figuring out what the benefit of a full version > Marathon really was at first. > > > > So, Marathon call VMotion or in Citrix parlance Xen Motion, Level 1 > protection. If a server failure occurs, the virtual machines will restart > elsewhere. > > > > Level 2 is the current EverRun VM offering. With this offering you do not > use shared storage. The storage is mirrored between the two physical boxes. > In fact so is the Memory usage, and CPU I/O. With the system up and running, > if you have a network card failure on one of the physical servers Network > I/O fails over to the other physical machine and is carried across to the > other server on management links between the two. Typically you see one ping > packet dropped in this process, and this is due to the switch having to cope > with the MAC address of the physical connection changing ports, not the > software itself. So perhaps a drawback is that you have to invest in ample > localised storage to accommodate your VM's, but what you get is a system > that will give you server uptime you won't believe. In the event of a > physical server failure, the VM does have to restart on the other physical > server, however it is much quicker because there is a standby ghost copy of > your running VM already waiting to come out of standby, so your 'boot' time > is way less than a fresh VM boot as you would see in VMotion etc. > > > > The main advantage of this solution then is that you do not have a single > point of failure in terms of a shared storage unit. > > > > In the next few weeks I am told that Marathon will have a level three > protection offering which will see no server restart for failure at all. > Pull the plug out of one of the servers and your virtual machine will just > stay up and running. They already have a product called EverRun FT that > offers this level of protection, but it needs three windows licenses and > costs $16000 just for the Marathon software. The EverRun VM is less than > half of that and includes your Citrix Xen Server licenses. > > > > In terms of management, it is done by a web page for the Marathon side of > it, and the Citrix Xen Management Console can be installed on anything > Windows XP and up, so you have no single point of failure for a management > console as I understand is the case in an ESX environment? > > > > What's more (and this sounds scary, but isn't if you think about it) you > can configure your storage on each physical machine as one big volume with > no striping or mirroring for the local RAID controller to deal with. > Marathon mirrors the storage, so you don't need to worry about local RAID > protection, so you get better read/write speeds as an end result. > > > > I recently installed this solution for a client, and he pointed out the > Marathon as a company struck him as a group of guys that got together and > made an awesome product, and then forgot to sell it lol. > > > > *From:* James Rankin [mailto:[email protected]] > *Sent:* 11 February 2009 14:17 > *To:* NT System Admin Issues > *Subject:* Re: Vendor Question > > > > Is that just their version of VMotion? I run a virtual Citrix farm and > obviously am very interested in anything that increases the reliance of my > servers...but I already have Virtual Center, VMotion, HA and all the other > bells and whistles that go with ut > > 2009/2/11 Doige, Clayton <[email protected]> > > Tell them to look at EverRun VM from Marathon. > > > > www.marathontechnologies.com > > > > awesome solution, sits on top of the citrix virtual server platform (Xen > Server) so you can use it to protect multiple virtual servers for the cost > of one server pair license (the license includes the cost of two copies of > Xen Server Enterprise) so the bund comes in under £4K british plus the > hardware, which just needs to be Hardware Virtualisation Assist enabled. > > > > *From:* [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] > *Sent:* 11 February 2009 13:51 > *To:* NT System Admin Issues > *Subject:* Vendor Question > > > > Does anyone have any experience with this company or their hardware. > Medical client looking to move their servers to this. Recommended by the > app vendor. > > > > http://www.stratus.com/products/ftserver/index.htm > > > > Thanks, just looking for feedback. > > > Greg > > > > > > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. > ______________________________________________________________________ > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > This electronic mail message and any attached files contain information > intended for the exclusive use of the person(s) to whom it is addressed and > may contain information that is proprietary, privileged, confidential and/or > exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended > recipient, you are hereby notified that any viewing, copying, disclosure or > distribution of this message or its contents may be subject to legal > restriction or sanction. If you have received this message in error, please > notify the sender immediately by electronic mail and delete the original > message and any attachments without retaining any copies. > _____________________________________________________________________ > > > > > > > > > > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. > ______________________________________________________________________ > > ______________________________________________________________________ > This electronic mail message and any attached files contain information > intended for the exclusive use of the person(s) to whom it is addressed and > may contain information that is proprietary, privileged, confidential and/or > exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended > recipient, you are hereby notified that any viewing, copying, disclosure or > distribution of this message or its contents may be subject to legal > restriction or sanction. If you have received this message in error, please > notify the sender immediately by electronic mail and delete the original > message and any attachments without retaining any copies. > _____________________________________________________________________ > > > > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
